


leave the world outside

by glorious_spoon



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: First Time, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Misunderstandings, Pining, Self-Discovery, Sexuality Crisis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-18
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2018-04-09 21:32:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4364933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's always known that Foggy was attracted to him. It's never been an issue, until now. Or, Matt is kind of dense, and Foggy is incredibly patient.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/3230.html?thread=6310302#cmt6310302) on the Daredevil kink meme:
> 
> Matt tries to seduce Foggy to get him to stay, but Foggy figures out what he's doing and it like 'nope, I don't think so, buddy'.
> 
> And Matt is super relieved at first, but then he can't stop thinking about it. And eventually he decides that he really does want Foggy...but then he has to convince him. Happy ending preferred.

The thing is, he’s always known Foggy was attracted to him. Right from the very beginning, when Foggy called him handsome in the same breath as a greeting, when his heartbeat ramped up at Matt’s handshake, when it _kept happening_ every time they touched. It felt weird as hell, at first, but Foggy never brought it up beyond the occasional flirting that was so over the top even Matt couldn’t take it seriously, and eventually it just became part of the background hum of Foggy’s existence in his life, like his girly shampoo and the way he liked to tell the same stories over and over again without ever keeping the details straight. As far as awkward crushes went, this one was surprisingly not-awkward, actually.  
  
And then Daredevil happened, and Fisk, and Matt’s carefully constructed world went straight to hell.

* * *

Things are awkward afterward.  
  
They try, both of them. He knows Foggy is making an effort, and for the first few months he’s so damn grateful that it’s the only thing he notices. Foggy takes him out drinking and takes over his caseload when he can’t make it in and on more than one occasion patches him up after a particularly brutal night.  
  
That’s how it starts. In Foggy’s bedroom, middle of the night, the smell of antiseptic and latex gloves, the two shots of whiskey Matt had for the pain and Foggy mumbling curses under his breath as he smooths the edges of the bandages down. It’s not serious. Matt wouldn’t have come here if it was serious, but two of the gashes are on his back, where he can’t easily reach. Foggy pulls the gloves off, takes a short breath, and Matt knows he’s going to say--  
  
“Damn it, Matt, I know you feel like this whole lone gun thing is something you have to do, but would it kill you to be careful?”  
  
Matt rolls his head back against the headboard and smiles in his direction. “I’m careful.”  
  
“If this is careful, I don’t want to see what reckless looks like.”  
  
“I’m alive, aren’t I?”  
  
Foggy lets out a hard, angry breath through his nose. “What if one day I’m not around? Or Claire? What happens if you end up like this and nobody’s there to patch you back together? Have you even considered that?”  
  
“It’s not that serious, Foggy, come on--”  
  
“This time! This time it’s not that serious. Do I have to remind you about that time I found you half dead on your living room floor? Because I sure as hell haven’t forgotten, and neither have my anxiety meds.”  
  
“You’re not on anxiety meds,” Matt points out, “and anyway, I thought we were past this.”  
  
“No,” Foggy says. “No, we are _not_ past this. We’re not--” He sighs, and it’s like the anger just runs out of him, the stiffness melting into exhaustion as he sinks down on the mattress next to Matt. “I don’t know how long I can watch you do this to yourself, okay?”  
  
A sharp spike of fear drops into Matt’s gut. He doesn’t mean--he can’t mean--  
  
He knows Foggy doesn’t mean that he’s going to leave. He knows that. Foggy came back; Foggy always comes back.  
  
But for how long? There’s nothing tying him to Matt, not really. Nothing but their friendship and his own overdeveloped sense of responsibility, and for that he gets to patch up his best friend in the middle of the night and lose sleep and get shot at. It’s not fair, and sooner or later Foggy is going to figure that out. He could have so much more than this.  
  
They’re sitting on the bed, close together: Foggy’s kneecap pressed against Matt’s thigh, the warmth of his arm on the mattress, the familiar sound of his breathing, his heartbeat. He takes another short breath, and Matt can’t stand to listen to it, can’t take the chance that he’s going to say _I can’t do this Matt, I can’t do this anymore--_  
  
So he does the only thing he can think of. He leans in and kisses Foggy on his half-open mouth.  
  
Foggy freezes, emanating shock. Matt reaches up, touches his cheek, the dear, familiar curve of his jaw, and Foggy makes a small noise in the back of his throat and tilts his head, and they’re kissing for real.  
  
It’s not quite like anything Matt has experienced, and he’s kissed a lot of people. All women, though, up to now, and it turns out that does make a difference; Foggy’s jaw is rough beneath his fingertips, the scent of his skin unmistakably masculine. There’s a hot flush rising in his cheeks, the beginning of arousal, and Matt can’t think about that, can’t let himself think that far ahead now, but it’s--nice, actually. It feels good. Foggy is a surprisingly good kisser, and Matt lets himself relax a little, because maybe he doesn’t _want_ it the way Foggy does, but it’s not going to be awful. He can do this.  
  
Then Foggy breaks the kiss, pushes him away. It’s gentle--he’s not by nature a violent person, which is one of the many things that puts him several rungs above Matt on the grand ladder of morality--but his heart is thudding in his chest and his hands are shaking.  
  
When he speaks, his tone is careful. “What are you doing, Matt?”  
  
Matt tries out his most charming smile. It usually works pretty well on Foggy, but he’s at a slight disadvantage now because there’s still blood on his face and he’s not sure how bad the bruising is, but it’s bad enough to hurt at the stretch of his lips. “Kissing you.”  
  
“That much I got. Why?”  
  
And God, what he would give to be able to say _because I want to_ and mean it. He can’t make his lips shape the lie, though, so he tries the next best thing. “Don’t you want me to?”  
  
“Yeah,” Foggy says bluntly, like the honesty is easy for him, like he isn’t baring himself in the worst way, like he doesn’t know that Matt can hear his heart pounding and smell arousal on his skin. “I’ve wanted you to kiss me since the first time you walked into our dorm room. Which I’m sure you know, Mr. Super-Senses-Ninja, so I guess what I’m wondering is why you’re doing it _now_.”  
  
Matt doesn’t answer. Foggy breathes in sharply--he forgets sometimes, how smart Foggy is, how perceptive under the layers of snark and half-serious flirting--and then he’s standing, stepping back, his heartbeat ramping up in what Matt is pretty sure is not arousal. “Oh, you have to be kidding me. This is--you know, I knew you had that whole Catholic guilt thing going on, but I did at least think that the ‘Catholic’ part would stop you from trying to seduce me because you feel bad!”  
  
Matt winces. “That’s not why.”  
  
“Then why?” A rustle, an angry breath; Foggy is tugging at his hair. “Enlighten me, please, Matthew!”  
  
“I--”  
  
“What, do you think I’m going to leave if you don’t--” Foggy breaks off abruptly, and Matt cringes, waiting for it. “Oh, my God. That’s it, isn’t it? You think I’m going to leave, so you--”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“You’re--” Foggy bites down on what is probably an impressive stream of invective, spins away on his heel. His heart is pounding, and he’s flushed--the rush of blood in his cheeks, his hands twitching like he wants to punch something. He takes several deep, slow breaths, and then says, “Matt, I’m not going anywhere. I’m pissed off at you for lying to me, and I’m really pissed off that you’re trying to get yourself killed, but I’m not going anywhere. Okay? You got it?”  
  
Matt nods. He can feel his cheeks burning, and he knows Foggy can see it. “I got it.”  
  
“Good.” Another deep breath, then Foggy crosses the room and sits back down, leaving a good three feet of space between them on the bed. “I know you’re straight, okay? And yeah, maybe I--” A rustle of cloth as he shrugs, and it’s actually painful how casual he’s trying to sound. “I’ve, you know, thought about it, but you’re my best friend, and I’m not just hanging around in hope of a pity blowjob.”  
  
Matt nods again. His face is still red, he knows, and he can feel blood pounding in his ears, and he’s suddenly very glad that Foggy can’t sense the things he can because the image that flashes into his head at that is so vivid that it’s like being hit with a two-by-four--the thought of kneeling between Foggy’s solid thighs, Foggy’s hands tangled in his hair, what he would taste like and sound like and feel like--  
  
The arousal that follows in a flash of heat and prickling skin is, well. Unexpected.  
  
Very distantly, he hears Foggy say, “Okay, I’m going to bed,” and he manages to nod and say something reasonable back.  
  
The door clicks shut, and Matt sinks back on the bed, putting his hands over his face.  
  
It’s fatigue, he thinks. Fatigue, and a long dry spell, and the fact that Foggy kissed him like he was something precious and not the blind, fucked-up son of a broken-down prizefighter. That would be enough to mess with anybody’s head. It’s not that he doesn’t love Foggy. He does.  
  
_I know you’re straight_ , Foggy said, and he is. He always has been.  
  
This is just a fluke.

* * *

Only the thing is, he can’t stop thinking about it.  
  
Foggy is determinedly normal the next morning. He throws a cushion at Matt’s face to wake him up and offers to order in Thai for breakfast, with the caveat that Matt will be expected to pay for it, because, as he says, “That couch is probably older than my grandma, if I have to sleep on it the least you can do is pony up for breakfast.”  
  
“I’m not responsible for your taste in home decor,” Matt says, and Foggy laughs at him, and it’s actually almost normal.  
  
It’s almost normal except for the way Foggy steps away sharply when Matt gets too close, for the way he doesn’t fuss about the way Matt’s face is starting to swell and ache. Matt can feel the pulpy bruising under his fingertips when he prods at his cheekbone, and he remembers Battlin’ Jack Murdock’s fighting days well enough to guess how it looks. It’s not serious--facial injuries almost always look worse than they actually are--but Foggy didn’t grow up stitching wounds and mopping blood under the dusty glow of a kitchen light, and he’s usually inclined to fuss. He doesn’t, this time.  
  
Matt tries, just once, over pad thai at the coffee table. “Look, about last night--”  
  
“No,” Foggy says flatly.  
  
“No?”  
  
“No, I’m not going to assist in your self-flagellation. That’s what you people have priests for.”  
  
“Us people?” Matt asks, reluctantly amused.  
  
“Catholics. Or self-designated martyrs, whichever’s more appropriate.” Foggy gestures at him sharply with his chopsticks, and Matt can smell fish sauce and soy. His heartbeat is perfectly steady. “You aren’t the first attractive drunk person to lay one on me, and I’m sure you won’t be the last. Stop beating yourself up about it.”  
  
“I wasn’t that drunk,” Matt admits.  
  
“I know, Matt,” Foggy says. It’s quieter, uncharacteristically serious. “Can we please drop it?”  
  
Matt doesn’t want to make Foggy beg--he doesn’t deserve that on top of everything else--so he nods. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

* * *

Foggy has at least half of a point about the self-flagellation, but Matt detours three blocks around St. Patrick’s on his way home anyway. He doesn’t have the faintest clue how he’s going to explain this to Father Lantom, and it doesn’t help that he’s not even sure which part of last night he should be confessing to.  
  
Another priest might assign him penance for kissing a man--a Rosary or two, maybe a stern admonition about the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, and that would be the end of it. Lantom, though, will probably sit there in perfectly non-judgemental silence until Matt spills his guts, and that’s not something he’s prepared to face right now.  
  
He takes the rooftops home instead, strips out of his armor, climbs into the shower, and stands under the spray until the water starts to get cold and he’s almost erased the memory of Foggy’s lips from his skin. He still feels jumpy and oversensitive, and the hangover isn’t helping; what he’d really like to do is crawl into bed and die, or, failing that, go punch something--but they have a court date this afternoon and Karen still isn’t completely comfortable being in the office by herself, so he gets dressed, collects his glasses and his cane, and heads in to work.  
  
Foggy is already there, leaning over the conference table with a giant mug of coffee in one hand, when Matt comes in. He smells of shampoo, slightly damp hair, and the cheap soap he uses to shave with. Unscented. He stopped using aftershave in college, after Matt mentioned in passing that chemical scents bother him, and he’s never taken the habit back up. His cheeks are smooth, though, surprisingly soft, Matt remembers that much--  
  
He shakes his head sharply and lets the door swing shut behind him.  
  
“You look like shit,” Karen observes from the door of her office. She sounds more amused than concerned, though, so hopefully the bruising isn’t too bad. He’s got concealer that he can use, but he can’t exactly apply it himself, and the thought of getting Foggy to do it right now makes something hot and strange and panicky rise up in the back of his throat. If people ask, he’ll just tell them he walked into a doorframe. Karen won’t ask. Karen never asks, which kind of makes Matt wonder just how much she’s managed to figure out on her own.  
  
“Late night,” he says.  
  
Foggy snorts and takes a long, pointed gulp of his coffee.  
  
“I hope she was worth it,” Karen teases, and Matt feels his face go hot.  
  
Foggy snorts again, louder this time, and Matt jabs him surreptitiously with his cane as he passes. “Ow!”  
  
“Sorry, buddy,” Matt says blandly. “Didn’t see you there.”  
  
Foggy laughs out loud at that, and the thing is, the warmth that spreads through his chest at the sound isn’t even new. Matt rubs his knuckles against his chest, where he can feel his heart pounding. He’s starting to wonder if someone slipped him something last night--if one of the blades that caught him was treated with some bizarre drug--but realistically, he knows that’s not the case. It’s his own damn brain that’s giving him trouble, same as usual. He’s always been like that. Something gets into his head and he just can’t let it go.  
  
It’s not that he wants Foggy, not like that; they’ve known each other for years. If Matt was going to have a belated sexual crisis, it would have happened by now. This--the warmth in his chest, the flush he can feel at the surface of his skin, the way he can’t stop wondering if Foggy’s mouth would taste like coffee and the Danish he had for breakfast--it’s just his mind worrying at a loose thread. It’ll pass as soon as he finds something else to keep his attention, and the sooner, the better.  
  
At least it looks like Foggy is chalking the whole thing up to whiskey and endorphins and what he likes to refer to as Matt’s overdeveloped sense of Catholic guilt. There’s no tension in him that Matt can discern. “Matt, I talked to the DA’s office, that obnoxious little asshole, what’s his name--”  
  
“Jennings,” Matt supplies automatically.  
  
“Right, right. They faxed over the brief, if you want to--”  
  
“I’ll take a look at it,” Matt says immediately.  
  
“Cool, thanks.” Foggy turns back to his papers. Matt can hear the scratch of his pen. His heart is perfectly steady.  
  
“So I’ll just--yeah” Matt says, and flees into his office.  
  
In the room behind him, Karen asks, “What’s with him this morning?”  
  
“I have no idea,” Foggy says, and his heart speeds up slightly at the lie.


	2. Chapter 2

“I’ll take this one, if you want,” Foggy says outside the courthouse. “You look like someone took a baseball bat to the side of your head.”  
  
Matt rubs at his bruised cheek, grimaces. “That is more or less what happened.”  
  
 _“Seriously,_  Matt?”  
  
“Piece of rebar, actually. But it’s the same general idea.”  
  
Foggy sighs gustily. “In the future, please consider all such questions strictly rhetorical. I really don’t need to know the details. Are you sure you’re not concussed? Because that would explain--” he breaks off.  
  
That would explain the kissing. A part of him wants to grab onto the excuse, but it would probably just make Foggy worry more. “I’m not concussed.”  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
“That’s what I have a helmet for, Foggy. I’m not concussed. It’s just a bruise.”  
  
“A nasty bruise. If you could see what you’re doing to that pretty face of yours, maybe you’d be more careful.”  
  
Matt swallows. It’s not--that’s just how Foggy talks, and right now he sounds the farthest thing in the world from flirtatious. It doesn’t mean anything. “Does it really look that bad?”  
  
“Uh, yeah.”  
  
“I have concealer in my bag,” Matt says, before he can chicken out. Foggy’s covered bruises for him dozens of times, and he’s good at it; their client really doesn’t need the distraction of a lawyer who looks like the wrong end of an amateur boxing match. Whatever issues he has going on in his head, he will  _deal with._  “If you want to do cover-up.”  
  
“This is so not what I thought my life was going to be like when I went to law school,” Foggy sighs, shifting his bag to his other shoulder. “Yeah, all right. Come on, Cinderella, let’s get you ready for the big dance.”

* * *

  
“I really hope somebody walks in right now,” Foggy says, tilting Matt’s face toward the warmth of the light. “That would be awesome. This doesn’t look suspicious at all. Remind me again why we couldn’t just use the handicapped bathroom?”  
  
“Because it’s for handicapped people,” Matt says. Foggy’s fingers are gentle on his face, and soft; no callus or winter roughness, the faint glycerin smell of unscented moisturizer. His touch is feather-light, but it still stings.  
  
“You’re handicapped.”  
  
“You know what I mean.”  
  
“I admire your selflessness and dedication to principle, but sometimes it can be very damn inconvenient,” Foggy says, unscrewing the cap for the concealer. He sets it on the sink counter with a faint  _clink_  and dips his fingers in the makeup, the sharp chemical scent of it momentarily overpowering. Matt wrinkles his nose. “Now hold still.”  
  
Matt holds still. Foggy smoothes the thick cream across the bruise with quick, sure motions; he actually really is good at this, apparently a skill acquired in high school drama club and occasionally put to nefarious uses, at least if his wilder stories are to be believed. His face is close to Matt’s, his breathing slow and even; if Matt concentrates he can almost make out his intent expression, the way his brows draw together and his lips purse. He has only a sketchy idea of what Foggy looks like--faces are easiest to read by touch, and he’s only done that once--but he can feel the memory of his skin beneath his fingertips, warm and tingling.  
  
It’s over too quickly, and not nearly quickly enough for Matt’s frazzled nerves. Foggy steps back, puts the cap back on the concealer, and says, “There you go, good as new.”  
  
“Thank you,” Matt says quietly.  
  
“Anytime. Or, you know,  _not,_  actually--as much as I enjoy reliving my theater days, I’d much rather be doing your makeup because you, I don’t know, discovered some long-suppressed ambition of moonlighting as a drag queen instead of getting your face bashed in by criminals.”  
  
Matt laughs, startled. “I don’t think I can walk in heels.”  
  
“You can backflip off a building, I’m pretty sure you could do the Tina Turner strut if you put your mind to it.” Foggy claps him on the shoulder, his voice full of laughter. “Come on, we’re going to be late.”

* * *

The case is, for once, fairly open-and-shut, a teenaged store clerk who found herself accused of cleaning out the register drawers after she rebuffed her manager’s attentions. The prosecution’s case is flimsy enough that Matt is actually wondering if someone has been bribed to bring charges, but that’s a matter for Daredevil to investigate, not Matthew Murdock; for the time being, he sits between their client, Alicia Gonzalez, and her mother, listening to Foggy narrate over the security tape footage.  
  
“--and as you can clearly see, this cuts out exactly one minute before the cash drawers were opened last. My client did not have the knowledge or the access to tamper with the cameras, and in fact was not, at the time of the theft, even in the building. Security cameras from the deli across the street clearly show her outside the building, talking into her cell phone at the precise time when the alleged robbery took place.” His voice is smooth, clear and confident; he’s in his element here, always at his best on the courtroom floor. Matt might be the one with the strange abilities and the shadowy alter-ego, but of the two of them, Foggy is the gifted lawyer, and it is a pleasure to listen to him work. “The prosecution has yet to present any evidence whatsoever that my client was even present at the scene of the robbery, much less that she is the guilty party.” He steps back, shoes squeaking faintly on the tiled floor. “Thank you.”  
  
He turns back toward them, and Matt grins, gives him a discreet thumbs-up. Foggy’s heart speeds up slightly, a faint heat rising in his cheeks.  
  
Matt feels an answering warmth in his own face, and he drops his head, concentrates on the smooth surface of the table beneath his fingers. Yeah. It’s possible he might be in some trouble, here.

* * *

The jury deliberates for all of fifteen minutes before returning a ‘not guilty’ verdict, and Matt accepts grateful hugs from Alicia and Mrs. Gonzalez, listens to Foggy’s pleased laughter when the latter takes his face between her hands and kisses him on both cheeks, and instructs them to drop by the office tomorrow to make sure that everything is cleared up. Then it’s just the two of them in the hallway outside the courtroom, and he doesn’t need to see Foggy’s expression to know that he’s grinning.  
  
“Well, seeing as it’s Friday and we are once again victorious, I think we should go gather Karen and get a celebratory drink or three at Josie’s. What do you say?”  
  
Matt shakes his head. “I should go home. Try to get some sleep before--well. Before I go out tonight.”  
  
“That’s a disturbingly sensible idea, coming from you. Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”  
  
“I’m fine.”  
  
“Right.”  
  
“Seriously, Foggy, I’m fine. Just tired.”  
  
For a moment, he thinks Foggy might push it, but he doesn’t. “Suit yourself,” he says cheerfully. “If you decide you’ve had enough brooding in your lonely apartment, though, you know where to find me.”  
  
“Yeah,” Matt says. “Thanks. I’ll think about it.”  
  
He really needs to talk to his priest.

* * *

He finds Father Lantom in the nave, sitting quietly in an otherwise empty pew. His breathing is slow and even and he smells faintly of incense and cigarette smoke. He doesn’t turn toward Matt, doesn’t tense up the way most people do when someone sits behind them. After a long silence, he says, “Something on your mind, Matthew?”  
  
“Yes,” Matt says, twisting his hands together in his lap.  
  
“Hm.” Lantom allows the silence to stretch out again before finally asking, “Are you going to tell me what it is?”  
  
Matt takes a deep breath, then lets it out again. Doesn’t speak.  
  
“That bad?”  
  
“No. No, it’s--” It’s not that bad. It’s not  _anything,_  compared to what he’s already confessed to this man, and Matt wonders what that says about him, that he finds it easier to own up to the bloody swath of destruction he’s cut through the criminals of this city than one brief, confusing kiss. “It’s not that bad.” He huffs out a breath of laughter. “I haven’t killed anyone.”  
  
“I’m glad to hear it,” Lantom says solemnly.  
  
“I--” He takes another deep breath. “I kissed someone. My friend. Foggy.”  
  
“I see.”  
  
“He’s a man.”  
  
“So I gathered,” Lantom says mildly. “I doubt you’d be in here twisting yourself up about it, otherwise.”  
  
“I know it’s a sin.”  
  
Lantom cocks his head. “Would you like me to assign you penance?”  
  
“You’re the priest,” Matt says tightly.  
  
“I am, yes. And my job is overseeing the souls of my congregation. Are you in fear for your soul, Matthew?”  
  
“I--” Matt stops. He could say yes, but even though Lantom can’t hear heartbeats, he’s been a priest long enough to know a lie when he hears one. And there’s really no point in lying to a priest. “No. Not about this, anyway.”  
  
“That’s what I thought.” There’s a rustle of cotton as Lantom turns in his seat. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re really here?”  
  
“I don’t know what to say to him.” Matt takes his glasses off, rubs the bridge of his nose. “He’s my best friend. It’s not fair to be messing with his head. I just did it because I thought that’s what he wanted, that it might be enough to make him stay, but--”  
  
“But,” Lantom repeats gravely. “You owe it to your friend to be honest with him. What do you want?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Matt says. “I don’t--I don’t  _know._ ”  
  
“Well,” Lantom says, “maybe you need to work that out, first.”

* * *

He tries, he really does. Foggy seems to forget about the Incident fairly quickly (that’s what Matt has taken to calling it in his head, the Incident, capital letter and all, and he’s perfectly well-aware of exactly how ridiculous that makes him); his lingering awkwardness dissipates quickly, and within a week he’s back to slinging his arm around Matt and burying his face in his neck when he laughs, and  _how the hell_  did Matt not find this distracting before?  
  
He knows Foggy loves him. But Foggy loves Karen, too, and Josie, and Brett; he loved Elena Cardenas with her sweet quick voice and her hands that always smelled like cocoa butter; he loves his mother and his father and his sisters. He still loves Marci, even after everything. Foggy loves people easily, fearlessly, in a way that Matt can admire but not emulate. It’s inexplicable that he loves Matt, but it’s not unique.  
  
Foggy wants him, too, but he also turned him down, and the thing is, Matt isn’t even sure if he’s bothered by that because of his ego--he’s not exactly the playboy Foggy likes to make him out to be, but it’s not often that he’s flat-out rejected--or if it’s something else. Something like  _wanting_  to kiss Foggy again, to keep kissing him, to strip him out of the coarse broadcloth shirts he wears, to map the shape of his body, the dip and curve of his spine, and--  
  
\--and this is really not the kind of thing he needs to be thinking at work, even if Foggy isn’t in the same room as him. Matt can  _smell_  him, even from the other side of the office.  
  
“Hey, do you have a minute?” Karen asks from the doorway, and he almost jumps out of his skin. “I’m sorry, did I--”  
  
“It’s fine,” Matt says quickly, pressing his palms against the desk. “I was just thinking. What’s up?”  
  
“I can come back later,” Karen says, and her heart is thudding in her chest and he can smell the ghost of whiskey on her breath, under the coffee and toothpaste. She isn’t drunk, but Karen has the same slightly unhealthy relationship with alcohol that Foggy does, and she probably had a shot before she left for work this morning, to steel herself for whatever it is she wants to tell him. It’s the sort of thing Matt always thinks he should scold about, but it’s not like he has a leg to stand on when it comes to self-destructive habits. “If you’re busy.”  
  
“It’s fine, Karen,” he repeats, more gently this time. “Come in.”  
  
She comes into the office and shuts the door behind her. It wouldn’t stop Matt from overhearing if he was in the other room, and honestly it probably wouldn’t stop Foggy, if he was paying attention; the walls aren’t exactly soundproof, but she apparently needs at least the illusion of privacy.  
  
“What’s going on?” he asks again, when she doesn’t say anything.  
  
“I--” she begins, then stops. Shakes her head. “Someone tried to follow me home last night.”  
  
Matt feels himself go still at that, distraction evaporating. On the other side of the wall, he hears the rhythm of Foggy’s typing stop. “Tried?”  
  
“I’m pretty sure I threw him off going through Chinatown, but--yeah.”  
  
“Do you know why?” He’s fairly sure that Karen wouldn’t have come to him about some random creep; she’s pretty stubborn about handling that kind of thing on her own, even though Matt (and probably Foggy too, for that matter) would cheerfully beat to a pulp every asshole who cat-calls her on the street or gropes her on the subway.  
  
“No,” she says immediately. Her heartbeat speeds up--a lie. She knows, or at least she has a pretty good idea. “But he wasn’t--you know how guys look when they want that kind of thing. Or, I guess you don’t,” she corrects quickly, and Matt’s not sure if she’s referring to his gender or his blindness or both. She’s right; he doesn’t know. But he can guess. “But he wasn’t like that. He was--professional.”  
  
“Professional. How?”  
  
“He stayed out of sight. He didn’t--he wasn’t trying to get me to notice him. I’ve had guys follow me on the street before, but they’re--they want attention, you know? This guy, he didn’t want me to notice him. And I’m pretty sure he was wearing a gun.”  
  
“And you don’t want to go to the police,” Matt says. It’s not a question.  
  
“I don’t trust the police. Not after what happened with Fisk.” A soft rustle of hair; she’s shaking her head. Her heart is still rabbit-quick. Not trusting the police might be part of it--a completely reasonable attitude, after everything that’s happened recently--but it isn’t everything. There’s something else complicating the issue, something she isn’t willing to tell him yet.  
  
Matt is a lawyer, not a detective, but he knows a few things about getting information out of reluctant witnesses. Pushing her right now will get him nowhere.  
  
“Okay,” he says, sliding his chair back and standing. “We’ll figure it out. You might want to let Foggy in on it, though.”  
  
“Let me in on what?” Foggy calls from the other side of the door. “Because I have no idea what the two of you are talking about, obviously.”  
  
Karen draws a sharp breath; Matt gives her his most disarming smile. “Thin walls.”  
  
“You knew he was listening,” she accuses, but she doesn’t sound angry. Good.  
  
“Just a guess,” Matt lies easily.  
  
“Are you guys going to tell me what’s going on?” Foggy asks, opening the door. “I don’t have freaky bat hearing like Matt, here, but I’m pretty sure I heard you say that somebody tried to follow you home.”  
  
“It’s not a big deal,” Karen says immediately.  
  
“If he had a gun, it’s a big deal,” Matt says.  
  
Foggy sucks in a breath. “Wait, wait, a  _gun?_  I definitely missed that part.”  
  
“I didn’t see a gun,” Karen says. “I just...he looked like the kind of guy who might have one. He was wearing a shoulder holster.”  
  
And how she knows what that looks like sounds like an interesting conversation, but one best saved for another day.  
  
“Look,” Foggy is saying. “I know you’re Ms. Independent, which, by the way, totally admirable, but maybe you should let me or Matt walk you home tonight?”  
  
“Matt’s blind,” Karen says, and her tone is...not dubious. Challenging, almost, which is interesting. Or possibly worrisome. “What’s he going to do?”  
  
“You laugh, but he’s got a mean right hook,” Foggy says, and--right. He would know. Matt had somehow managed to forget that he took a swing at Foggy sometime during that first awful night after the fight with Nobu. He still doesn’t remember doing it, but that doesn’t mean that Foggy doesn’t. He does have a mean right hook; that part is perfectly true. Battlin’ Jack taught him how to throw a punch long before he fell into Stick’s clutches; before he lost his sight, even.  
  
“My dad was a boxer,” he adds smoothly, out loud. “The offer is open, if you want it.”  
  
Karen is silent long enough that he’s sure she’s going to refuse, but then-- “Yeah, okay,” she says. “Yeah. That would be nice.”

* * *

  
“I’m sorry,” he tells Foggy that afternoon, while Karen is downstairs at the deli.   
  
“What for?”  
  
“About the whole--” he balls his fist up, loosely, grimaces. “Hitting you. When you found me that night. I’m sorry.”  
  
Foggy snorts. “Matt, this may shock you to hear, but I have actually been in a fistfight before. Which, okay, was in ninth grade, but still.”  
  
“I still shouldn’t have--”  
  
“You missed,” Foggy interrupts gently. His heart is steady. “Cracked a piece of molding, but you missed me. I said you had a mean right hook. I didn’t say you could aim particularly well.”  
  
“I didn’t--?”  
  
“You didn’t hit me. I’m surprised you didn’t break your knuckles.”  
  
Matt breathes out a laugh, letting himself relax. “It’s all about technique.”  
  
“Yeah? Maybe sometime you can teach me.”  
  
Even a few months ago, he would have shot that idea down without a second thought. Now, though--he bites his lip, thinks about Claire telling him that he’s going to end up bloody and alone if he doesn’t start letting people in, and says, “Yeah. Maybe.”

* * *

The two of them end up walking Karen home together. She feeds them wine and some kind of complicated, delicious dish involving pasta and several different kinds of cheese, and Foggy says, “I could get used to bodyguard duty if this is the payment,” and it’s light and easy in a way things haven’t often been, lately.  
  
Karen throws them out after dinner, saying she needs her beauty sleep, and on the front step, Foggy catches his elbow. His hand is warm through the layers of Matt’s shirt and jacket, and his voice is soft. “Hey. Be careful out there tonight, okay?”  
  
“I will,” Matt says, and pulls his arm away before he can do something completely stupid. “I always am.”  
  
Foggy snorts, but lets Matt go without argument.  
  
Daredevil skulks the streets near Karen’s apartment for hours, but other than a couple of entirely unrelated muggings, he doesn’t encounter anything suspicious. That doesn’t, for some reason, actually make Matt feel any better.


	3. Chapter 3

He gets to work two hours early the next morning, and Karen is already there. The coffee left in the carafe is starting to scorch, which means she’s been there at least half an hour--probably longer. He turns the pot off, hangs up his jacket and leans his cane inside the office door, then pauses, considering. Karen usually only hangs around the office when she’s got some good reason not to be at home. No one threatened her after he and Foggy left last night; no one was hanging around her neighborhood who wouldn’t normally have been there. Her heartbeat sounds steady, and there’s no underlying stink of fear. Karen is prone to paranoia in ways that are familiar, that hint at some hidden damage lurking beneath the surface of her sweet, brisk, energetic idealism, but she isn’t actively afraid right now.  
  
He’s been standing in his office door too long. Karen’s heart picks up; she stops typing. “Is everything okay, Matt?”  
  
“I was going to ask you the same question,” he admits. “You’re here early.”  
  
“So are you.”  
  
“Touché.”  
  
She sighs. “I couldn’t sleep. Figured I might as well accomplish something other than lying awake, staring at my ceiling. What about you?”  
  
“More or less the same,” Matt says, which is true. Mostly.   
  
“Hm.” Her chair squeaks as she turns toward him. “Is everything okay with you and Foggy?”  
  
“Yeah,” Matt says quickly. “Why wouldn’t it be?”  
  
“You’ve been distracted. Both of you have. You’re not fighting, are you?”  
  
“We’re not fighting,” Matt says. He’s pretty sure that’s true. Foggy hasn’t been angry at him, even though he pretty much deserves it.  
  
“Good. Because if you were, I’d have to lock you both in the supply closet together until you worked it out. I’m not putting up with that again.”  
  
Matt laughs, although he doesn’t actually think she’s joking. And there’s a thought he doesn’t need to entertain in any detail--being trapped in an enclosed space with Foggy, breathing the same air-- “I don’t think that’s going to be necessary.”  
  
“So you’re not going to tell me what’s going on?”  
  
“Nothing’s going on,” he says firmly. It was a kiss. He’s kissed people before; plenty of people. He’s kissed strangers in bars, tipsy laughing sorority girls who tasted of lipstick and sugary alcohol; his high school girlfriend, Jeannie, who liked to pull his hair when he went down on her; the girls he dated in college--there weren’t as many of the as Foggy seems to think, but there were a few. He kissed Claire, even if she did shoot him down pretty thoroughly afterward. He and Karen might have hooked up, for that matter, if things had gone differently--the attraction is still there on her part, he knows, although it’s been tempered with a healthy dose of exasperated familiarity by now--and that would have been awkward for a while but he’s pretty sure that it wouldn’t have lodged in his head like this.  
  
Foggy stands out, and Matt’s not even sure if it’s just because he’s a man, or because he’s  _Foggy,_  and Matt has just fundamentally unbalanced the stable bedrock of their friendship.  
  
Although if that’s the case, he seems to be the only one experiencing the dizzy sense of vertigo, which seems very unfair.   
  
“If you say so,” Karen is saying, skeptically.  
  
“What about you?” Matt asks.  
  
“What?”  
  
He slides his glasses off, orients his face in her direction. Visual cues are meaningless to him, but that doesn’t mean he can’t use them on other people. The glasses create a barrier, a degree of social distance that can be useful but which isn’t going to help him at all in getting Karen to open up. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”  
  
She swallows. “No. No, I’m--I’m sorry I bothered you yesterday. I just got freaked out, it’s probably nothing.”  
  
Her heart is pounding. Lie. “But you don’t think it’s nothing.” The silence stretches out for a long, uncomfortable moment. “Karen, if you’re in trouble--”  
  
Her jaw snaps shut with an audible click, and he can almost hear the shields go back up. “You’re not the only one who gets to keep secrets, Matt. I have work to do.”  
  
He miscalculated. That seems to be happening a lot lately. Matt slides the glasses back on his face and pushes off from the doorframe. “I’m sorry for prying. If you want to talk, you know where to find me.”  
  
“Yeah,” Karen says under her breath as he steps into his office. “Likewise.”  
  
He almost steps back out at that--it can be hard sometimes to tell which muttered comments he’s meant to overhear and which ones he isn’t--but Foggy is coming up the stairs, his gait loose and cheerful, carrying a box that smells of fresh bagels, and Matt abruptly decides that he isn’t up for another argument this morning, especially not on the topic of what is or isn’t wrong between him and Foggy.  
  
At least, he hopes that’s what she was talking about. The alternatives are...worrying.

* * *

He doesn’t get much accomplished that day. When five o’clock comes and goes without Karen giving any sign that she’s planning on leaving anytime soon, Foggy sighs loudly, pushes his chair back, and steps out of his office. “You guys are seriously the most depressing workaholics I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter.”  
  
“Wow, harsh,” Karen says mildly.   
  
“I mean it,” Foggy says. “This depresses me. I am depressed. I am going to go drink my sorrows, and you tragic peons are going to join me whether you like it or not.”  
  
“Or what?” Matt asks, grinning.  
  
“Hey, don’t get all high and mighty with me, mister, just remember how much blackmail material I have on you.”  
  
A month ago, that might have made Matt flinch, made him wonder if this would be the time that Foggy was going to blurt out his secret, but now he just laughs. “Don’t forget who got to listen to you talk in your sleep for three years of law school. If this is going to be a mudslinging competition, I don’t think you’ll win.”  
  
“That was low,” Foggy says, sounding amused.  _“Low,_  Murdock.”  
  
“Well, I am a lawyer.”  
  
“That’s true.” Foggy rocks back on his heels. “So you’re coming out drinking with me, right?”  
  
“Of course I’m coming out drinking with you,” Matt says. “Someone has to carry you home.”  
  
“You’re a true friend. Karen? You in?”  
  
“Like I’d miss a chance to see the two try to hit on Josie,” Karen laughs. “One of these days, she’s going to break a bottle over your heads, and I’ll be there to see it.”  
  
“Please. Josie loves us.”  
  
“I don’t think that’ll stop her,” Matt says, and of course, nobody can really argue with that.

* * *

When they sit down at the bar, Josie pauses for a long, judgemental moment before plunking a bottle and three glasses on the bar in front of them. “I don’t want to know anything about it,” she says, and walks away.  
  
“Can I at least get some ice?” Foggy calls after her, to no avail. He turns toward Matt. “Just so you know, there’s no label on this and I think it might be lighter fluid.”  
  
“Will it get us drunk?” Karen asks from his other side.  
  
“Or dead.” Foggy twists the cap off the bottle, and yeah--going by the smell, it just might be lighter fluid. That, or straight-up white lightning moonshine whiskey that sane people would probably use for cleaning industrial equipment and nothing else.   
  
Matt accepts the glass Foggy presses into his hands and takes a cautious sip. It burns on his lips and all the way down, but it makes a pleasant heat at the pit of his stomach. He takes another sip.  
  
Karen coughs. “Oh, my god, you weren’t kidding. Is this stuff even legal?”  
  
Foggy knocks his back like it’s water, clunks his glass back down on the counter, and fills it up again. “Bottoms up, you two. The sooner we stop tasting this, the better.”  
  
“I have a feeling I’m going to seriously regret this tomorrow,” Matt mutters, but he obeys. Josie’s is close to home, and it’s about as safe a place to drink as he’s ever going to find. Safer than his apartment, even, surrounded by the warm bustle of people who know him, who would look out for him if he needed it. Every heartbeat in this bar, every voice, the layered scents of whiskey and cigarette smoke and sweat, beer nuts and industrial floor cleaner, Foggy’s cheap soap to the left of him and Karen’s vanilla hand lotion to his right--it’s all familiar in the best ways. Like home. Something Stick always told him he’d never have.  
  
Foggy pours his glass full again and guides his hand to it. His fingers are warm. Matt takes a long drink of the godawful whiskey, and then, buoyed by a rush of affectionate warmth, slings an arm around his shoulders and leans his cheek against the soft worn cotton of Foggy’s pullover.  
  
“Oh, my god,” Karen says. “This is adorable. Are you feeling it already?”  
  
“He’s a lightweight,” Foggy says smugly.  
  
“Am not,” Matt protests, although he really is. And he’s actually not buzzed yet, or at least not enough to be hanging onto Foggy like this, especially in public. He draws back, and his entire left side feels cold, especially when Foggy doesn’t make any attempt to draw him back.  
  
“So,” he says instead, “are we going to talk about the thing we’re not talking about?”  
  
Matt experiences a bolt of pure panic that almost makes him spit out his drink before it occurs to him that Foggy is referring to his and Karen’s pointed silence at work today and not...anything else.  
  
“I already told Matt that I didn’t want to talk about it,” Karen says, sounding considerably less hostile than she did this morning.  
  
“Ah, but I bought you a drink.”  
  
“Isn’t that blackmail?”  
  
“No,” Foggy says, “this is bribery. Totally different. I’m attempting to break down your resistance by making you positively inclined toward me in the hopes that you’ll tell me what I want to know. Standard lawyering technique.”  
  
“I feel like I’m learning so much about our legal system,” Karen says, dry as dust. “And no, I still don’t want to talk about it.”  
  
Matt knows he’s already exhausted his store of good will and then some, but he can’t make himself stay silent. “Karen, if you’re in trouble--”  
  
“I’m not in trouble,” Karen interrupts. “And unless you want to tell me what’s been going on the past few days--” She breaks off at whatever expression Matt is wearing. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Can we just drink, please?”  
  
“You heard the lady,” Foggy says. He leans across Matt to pour Karen’s glass full again, and for a moment all Matt can smell is his skin, the soft brush of his hair, the scent of whiskey on his breath.  
  
He is seriously fucked.

* * *

Karen leaves before they finish the bottle, claiming a headache. The door creaks shut behind her, and Matt slides out of his seat, only for Foggy to reach over and put a restraining hand on his arm. “She’s a big girl, Matt. She can get home by herself.”  
  
Matt opens his mouth to protest, then shuts it again. Foggy’s right. Karen can get home by herself, and she’s not likely to take his interference kindly, at this point. Unless he wants to take to the roofs--  
  
Right. After four drinks, and in his work clothes. Great idea, Matty.  
  
 _You want to end up splattered across the pavement, Matty? ‘Cause that’s what’s gonna happen if you don’t pull your head outta your own ass and start paying attention._  
  
He shakes his head firmly, banishing the echo of Stick, just as Foggy adds, “Anyway, you need to help me drink the rest of this. If we don’t, Josie’s going to serve it to some other poor, unsuspecting bar patron and they’ll shut this place down. It’s our duty.”  
  
“You make a compelling argument, counsellor,” Matt concedes, and slides his glass over.

* * *

Josie kicks them out at closing time. The cold has completely settled in by the time the door swings shut behind them, blocking out the sound of clinking coins as Josie counts down the register. The air smells like exhaust fumes and cold rain that isn’t quite ready to fall, and Foggy is a solid line of heat against his side. Matt slings an arm over his shoulder, feeling, for a moment, entirely at peace with the world.  
  
“You are the cuddliest drunk I’ve ever met,” Foggy mutters, but he sounds fond.  
  
“Not drunk,” Matt says, leaning into him. “Just happy.”  
  
Foggy snorts. “Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Stairs,” he adds, as they approach a subway tunnel. Matt can feel the cooler air coming up, hear the rush of the train cars, but he just nods. After a moment Foggy adds, in an odd tone, “I guess I don’t have to do that anymore.”  
  
“Do what?”  
  
“Tell you things. I mean, you have the...super ninja senses, or whatever. I don’t want to--”  
  
“No,” Matt interrupts. He can feel his heart speeding up, and he’s absurdly, bizarrely glad that Foggy can’t hear the things he can. He can’t imagine a world without Foggy’s constant narration. Or rather, he can, but those awful few weeks after Foggy found out are not an experience he cares to repeat, ever. “I like when you tell me things. Don’t stop.”  
  
It comes out sounding too honest, too raw; he can tell that Foggy is staring at him, their faces so close that his breath is warm on Matt’s cheek, and it would be so easy to just lean in and--  
  
“Okay,” Foggy says after a long moment, tugging Matt toward the stairs. “In that case, I feel duty-bound to inform you that there’s a man up ahead of us wearing hot-pink Lycra pants and a cowboy hat.”  
  
Matt snorts into the soft fabric of Foggy’s hoodie, laughter bubbling up; the moment is broken, but he can’t bring himself to care.


	4. Chapter 4

Karen doesn’t come into work the next morning.  
  
Matt doesn’t think much of it at first; she’s not usually late, but it’s not as though any of them exactly keep regular hours, and they don’t have any clients scheduled until later in the afternoon. It is slightly disconcerting, though, to be there alone. Foggy is in court, and he feels adrift without the familiar creaking of her chair, the smell of coffee lingering in the air.  
  
He tries to lose himself in his work, and must do a pretty good job of it, because he’s completely lost track of the time when Foggy comes bounding up the stairs, pauses at the office door, and says, “Is Karen sick or something?”  
  
“What?” Matt asks, sliding his headphones off, trying to pry his brain out of the tedious reams of tax law that he’s been digging through.  
  
“She seemed fine last night. Did you talk to her?”  
  
“No,” Matt says, turning slowly in his chair, something cold sinking into the pit of his stomach. “No, I didn’t.”  
  
A long pause. Foggy’s heart starts to beat faster, but his voice is light as he digs through his pocket. “Well, I’ll just--”  
  
His fingers quick on the touchscreen, the tinny echo of ringing. Once, twice, three times. Four times, and Foggy says in a low voice, “She isn’t picking up.”  
  
“I know,” Matt says, shoving his chair back and standing.  
  
“We should--I mean, that’s crazy, right, we don’t need to go to her apartment, she’s probably…” Foggy trails off, takes a shaky breath. “Never mind. I’ll call a cab.”  
  
“Do that.”

* * *

Karen’s new apartment is a fifth-floor walk-up just outside the borders of Hell’s Kitchen. Matt crosses the sidewalk in long strides as Foggy shoves a handful of bills at the driver, opens the front door, and stops so suddenly that Foggy walks straight into his back.  
  
“What is it?” he asks.  
  
Matt shakes his head. “I’m not sure.”  
  
That’s a lie. He can smell--  
  
 _\--rotting garbage from the dumpsters out back, stale coffee in the super’s office, rock salt tracked in across the floor, the lingering remnants of cigarette smoke and blood blood blood--_  
  
It could be a lot of things, he tells himself as he sets off for the stairs, taking them two at a time, cane swinging unretracted, forgotten from his wrist, Foggy puffing slightly behind him as he struggles to keep up. It could be from a papercut, lingering to dry on a stair rail, but it’s not, because they’re almost to Karen’s door--fifth floor, two down on the right, fresh paint and the lingering remnant of her shampoo, and the smell of blood is strong enough to choke. He puts his shoulder to the door without slowing down and it slams open, unlocked, into a room that stinks of blood and fear-sweat.  
  
“Jesus,” Foggy whispers behind him.  
  
“Is she--” Matt shakes his head, doesn’t finish. She’s not here, and there’s not enough blood for her to have been killed here. That’s something. He tries to focus, tries to force the jumble of disordered shapes around him into some semblance of a room.  
  
“They trashed the place,” Foggy says, sounding steadier, like the sound of Matt’s voice was enough to make him pack away his own fear. “Like, totally trashed. I’m talking couch in three pieces trashed. She’s not here.”  
  
“The blood,” Matt says, and he can hear it in his own voice now, the fragile control. “There’s--I smell blood.”  
  
“I don’t see any,” Foggy says, but there’s no doubt in his voice.  
  
“There’s not a lot of it. Is there any--a note, or anything? Any sign?”  
  
Foggy picks his way into the apartment, and Matt gives up on trying to focus on the room, just follows the streak of heat in his footsteps. Something crunches under his feet; broken glass. Bread on the counter, smeared with butter that’s starting to go rancid in the warm apartment. The winter smell of wool and a hint of bar-smoke from the coat that’s somewhere to his left. She made it home last night. Home, and here long enough to take her coat off and fix a snack. And then--  
  
“Her phone is on the floor,” Foggy reports. “Open. Looks like she tried to call for help.”  
  
“Any messages?”  
  
“It’s screen-locked. Hang on.” There’s a series of beeps as he fiddles with the phone. Matt spins slowly in place, trying to force his jumbled senses into some semblance of order. There’s the fading smell of cheap cologne and cheaper cigars. Motor-oil fingerprints on the couch, which is in fact in three pieces, vomiting sharp-scented foam stuffing across the floor. The coffee table is on it’s side, cold tea splashed across it. This is where the main struggle was. Karen was here when they came in--kicked the door in, probably, because she’s way too paranoid to leave it unlocked no matter how tired or drunk she was. And she wasn’t that drunk, was she, she didn’t want to drink with them, and he should have known it, should have pushed harder, should have offered to walk her home--  
  
“--call the police?” Foggy is asking.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Do you think we should call the police?” Foggy repeats, and it says something about their lives, Matt thinks, that he’s asking that instead of just making the call automatically.  
  
Matt shakes his head, keeps turning, cataloging the smear of blood across the wall, the hint of drywall dust where Karen’s fingernails dug in. She fought, and fought hard, and if they were going to kill her they would have done it here. He has to believe that. “No,” he says finally. “She didn’t want the police involved.”  
  
Foggy lets out a slow breath; his hair rustles as he nods, steps closer to Matt. He doesn’t reach out, but he’s just  _there,_  a solid, comforting presence. “Do you think it was something to do with Fisk?”  
  
Yes. “I don’t know,” Matt says, “but I’m going to find out.”

* * *

It takes him less than a day to track down the hired thugs who took her. He corners them in a basement while Foggy is still down at the station talking to Brett, a greasy little hole that stinks of unwashed bodies and stale take-out, and when he kicks down the door one of the guys actually pisses himself. It’s pathetic.  
  
They don’t know anything. They shoved Karen into the back of a black car with tinted windows; they didn’t see the driver. She was still alive, still fighting. They can’t tell him one damn useful thing about who took her or where they went.  
  
He leaves their unconscious bodies zip-tied outside the precinct and keeps looking.  
  
His burner phone starts buzzing against his hip sometime near dawn, and he ducks down the nearest alleyway to answer it. “Foggy.”  
  
“I know it’s not a good time,” Foggy says. He sounds tired, stretched thin, like he hasn’t slept any more than Matt has. “But you should probably go home and get some sleep.”  
  
“I can’t--”  
  
“Or come here, if it’s closer. I promise you, I’m in no state to threaten your virtue.” The joke is habitual, so strained and tired that Matt can’t even manage to feel flustered. “Matty, come on. You can’t--” He takes a deep breath. “Brett’s looking, too, okay? But if you don’t at least take a nap you’re going to fall off a building or something, and I just--I cannot take that right now, okay? Please.”  
  
“I can’t,” Matt says, and hangs up the phone before Foggy can protest. He feels sluggish and tired, but he’s run the streets in much worse condition than this, and it’s Karen. He’ll manage, and Foggy will just have to deal with it.  
  
Three blocks away, he trips hard over a tin garbage can that there’s no way in hell he should have missed; he falls hard on the pavement, metal clanging in his ears and his nose full of the stink of asphalt and motor oil, and maybe that’s why he misses the sound of footsteps at the other end of the alley. Just one man, walking slow, but his stride is measured and his heart is steady and he doesn’t seem the least bit surprised or disconcerted to find the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen flat on his face in an alley.  
  
Warily, Matt pushes himself up to his feet. There’s a ladder two steps away that will get him to the roof well before the guy comes within grabbing distance, and in his present state that would probably be the smarter option--but Matt has never been one for taking the smarter option.  
  
He steps forward into the alley. “Who are you?”  
  
“That’s a bit forward, don’t you think?” There’s the slight edge of an accent--Eastern European, Matt thinks--and without his face mashed against the pavement he can smell the man’s cologne, the deodorant he’s almost sweating through, and--  
  
Lotion. Vanilla lotion and a trace of blood.  
  
Karen.  
  
“You kidnapped a woman,” Matt says flatly, almost certain now. “I’m not the one being forward. Who are you?”  
  
“An interested party,” the man says. Matt can hear the smile in his voice. “Your pretty friend has made some powerful enemies. But I suppose you knew that.”  
  
“I don’t care why you did it,” Matt says. “And I’m not interested in a negotiation.”  
  
“No, I didn’t think you would be. This is not about you, Daredevil. This is not your business, and it is not in your best interests to interfere.”  
  
Matt shakes his head at that, almost smiles. “It never is,” he says, and lunges.  
  
The man is quick for his size, and agile, but he’s clearly caught off his guard by the viciousness of the attack. He dodges the first blow but isn’t quite as lucky with the second; Matt feels the man’s neck snap back from the force of uppercut, the impact reverberating up through his arm. He doesn’t give him time to recover, gets him in an armlock while he’s still reeling and steps back far enough to pull him off balance.  
  
“I don’t want to have to kill you,” he hisses in the man’s ear, leaving the rest of the threat unspoken:  _but I will if I have to._  
  
“--don’t--” the man gasps.  
  
“Then  _tell me what I want to know_ ,” Matt spits. “Where is she?”  
  
The man takes a breath; his fingers flex against Matt’s arm. Then, in a whisper of breath, he names an address.  
  
Matt shoves him away and takes off running.

* * *

He can smell blood from three blocks away, the ghost of fresh cordite from two. He’s already sprinting all-out, but that gives him an extra burst of speed. That’s fresh gunpowder; if he’s already too late--  
  
The door bangs open at his kick, and he stumbles to a stop.  
  
The room beyond is huge and echoing. There are five people there. One of them is dead. Three are unconscious.  
  
He can smell vanilla lotion.  
  
A slow, shaky breath that it takes his whirling mind a moment to realize is not his own, and then Karen flings the gun away from her with a sob, wipes her bloody hands on the front of her shirt, and says, in a very small voice, “Hi, Matt.”


End file.
